IFS 101 Archives - Parts with Presley

Witness and Offer Options

by Presley

This entry is part 6 of 6 in the series IFS Practice 101

This is the last post in my IFS Practice 101 series. I spent five posts explaining how to get to know protective parts of you and get their permission to work with the hurt, exiled parts of you that they protect. But I’m going to cover working with these vulnerable exiles in just one post, and I’m doing that to make a couple of points.

First, because this isn’t a manual for working with exiles. You can start listening to the protectors that are chatting away in your head anytime. But working with exiles is delicate, and it’s really helpful to have a feel for your Self-energy before you attempt it. We don’t always get that luxury, of course—our exiles come out when they come out! But it wouldn’t be responsible of me to suggest you try following my directions based only on a blog post. Get some live experience with parts work first! What I hope this post will be useful for is understanding what the heck IFS is, and helping people who are learning IFS to understand this part of the process from a new angle.

Second, because I hold the IFS process for unburdening loosely (and so does official IFS, in fact). I think it’s helpful to think of it less as a series of steps and more as a menu of options you can offer your exiled part, who can take any of those options in any order they please, or come up with something new. That’s why I’ve boiled a classically 6-step process down to just two steps: witness and offer options.

Address concerns

by Presley

This entry is part 5 of 6 in the series IFS Practice 101

Now that you’ve built a relationship with a part of you and learned what would make things easier on that part, you can find out if it’s ready for you to go ahead and facilitate that change. Throughout the rest of the process, parts may pop up at any time with something to express (verbally or otherwise).

Our first goal is to distinguish between information and concerns.

Hearing Information

Sometimes parts just want to be heard:

“This will never work!”

“I really hated when that happened!”

and even “Remember to take out the trash later tonight!”

And that’s totally fine. The only action needed in these cases is to hear them and let them know you did. When parts of you feel heard, they tend to relax.

Establish a two-way connection

by Presley

This entry is part 3 of 6 in the series IFS Practice 101

If you’ve done the first and second steps of the parts work process, you’re ready to establish an inner connection. One of the defining features of parts work and especially Internal Family Systems is the two-way relationship between your parts and your core Self. Outside of parts work, we often try to have one-way relationships with our parts, by doing things like telling ourselves to think differently (talking to a part without listening to it) or feeling for subconscious associations (listening to a part without talking to it). Imagine how hard it would be to problem-solve with a friend if only one of you were allowed to talk! Parts work makes things easier by allowing us to have dialogues.

The fact that this is a dialogue doesn’t mean it has to come in verbal thoughts. Parts can communicate in different ways: through mental imagery, physical sensations, by guiding you to move in a certain way, or by giving you intuitions. Sometimes people can’t tell what a part is saying until they try drawing. The key is just that you are aware of the part and the part is aware of you.

Distinguish parts and Self

by Presley

This entry is part 2 of 6 in the series IFS Practice 101

The next step in the IFS process (start here if you missed the first step) is to sort out where all your different thoughts and feelings are coming from. Once you know who’s who, you can separate out:

your Self (your awareness/presence)
the part you’re trying to get to know (the target part)
and any other parts that are jumping in (the concerned parts)

Separating parts from your Self allows you to embody your inner wisdom and stay calm even while thinking about upsetting things. Separating parts from each other helps you get to know each one more deeply than you normally can. So let’s see how to do this!

Connect with a part of you

by Presley

This entry is part 1 of 6 in the series IFS Practice 101

The first step to doing parts work such as Internal Family Systems is to connect with a part of yourself. For those of you who are familiar with the “6 F’s” process for getting to know a part, this post corresponds to the first 3 F’s, but I break things down a little differently based on the kinds of questions I’ve seen people run into.

Get ready

Many people like to do parts work sitting with their eyes closed. Closing your eyes helps you focus on your internal experience. But it’s also possible to do this other ways. I often connect with my parts while taking a walk. I find that looking at the sky and the trees brings out my Self, and then it’s easier for me to connect with my parts as a result.

The friends we made along the way

by Presley

This entry is part 6 of 6 in the series IFS Theory 101

In the last post, we saw that Self builds relationships with parts, and those relationships make it possible to release burdens. Since burdens are the source of so many of our problems, this release can transform our lives for the better. And yet, I don’t believe that Self builds relationships in order to release burdens. I believe that Self builds relationships for their own sake. The real treasure, as they say, is the friends we made along the way.

Techniques for releasing burdens are not yet as widely known as they should be, but there are in fact many such techniques. However, I stick with IFS instead of, or in addition to, everything else because it gives me the ability to explicitly maintain long-term relationships with my parts.

Release, not self-restraint

by Presley

This entry is part 5 of 6 in the series IFS Theory 101

In You are not your parts, I introduced the concept that you are a Self underneath all of your parts. Your Self is pretty great! When you’re centered in your Self, you can handle any feeling, and you’re in touch with your natural wisdom about what’s best for you. But we learned that some parts of you carry burdens that are like bulky backpacks, taking up space in your inner world, blocking the influence or “energy” of the Self from shining through. So one of the goals of IFS work is to release those burdens and allow Self-energy to flow more freely.

I also pointed out that burdens have the effect of locking doors in your inner world, isolating parts from each other and from the Self. In the story of Alma, it’s obvious that Belle, Alma’s exile, is locked up and alone. But even Alma’s protectors Clara and David feel like they’re on their own, which makes them believe that they can’t give up their problematic strategies. So it’s not just the burdens that create problems; it’s also the isolation. Another goal of IFS work, then, is to unlock these doors and foster connections in the inner world.

Your parts are not their burdens

by Presley

This entry is part 4 of 6 in the series IFS Theory 101

As I mentioned in You are not your parts, “you are not your thoughts” is a common saying in mindfulness practices. IFS introduces a layer into this picture: there’s you, and then your parts, and then your thoughts:

You are a Self
You have parts
Parts have thoughts, emotions, sensations, and impulses (some of which are burdens)

The way I see it, differentiating your Self from your parts allows for mindfulness, and differentiating your parts from their thoughts and feelings allows for self-compassion (or rather, parts-compassion!).

Burdens lock doors for you

by Presley

This entry is part 3 of 6 in the series IFS Theory 101

IFS has a theory of how bad experiences give people burdens and turn their parts into exiles and protectors. To get a sense for this theory, imagine a girl named Alma. She gets good grades, and has fun with her friends—her life is pretty good. But one year in school, she has a teacher who takes to embarrassing her in front of the class when she doesn’t know the answer to a question. Alma’s too embarrassed to talk to anyone about it, and so she doesn’t manage to process and release the shame.

Exile

That feeling has to go somewhere, so a part of Alma—let’s call her Belle—takes on the shame along with the belief “I’m not smart enough.” You can imagine Belle carrying a backpack weighed down with that emotion and belief. The painful things a part carries make up its burden.

We all have parts

by Presley

This entry is part 1 of 6 in the series IFS Theory 101

Internal Family Systems (IFS) holds that the mind is made of multiple subpersonalities – that when you say “a part of me is angry, but a part of me understands,” that’s literally true.

In modern Western thought, the idea of “multiple personalities” has been associated with extreme pathology, and that pathology has been extremely stigmatized. That’s given us a lot of incentive to ignore and downplay any experience of multiplicity we may have. But what do you notice if you tune into your inner world with an open mind about parts?

Hearing Information

Get ready

Exile

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